Condusiv To Release Server I/O Acceleration Tech

Condusiv Technologies is expanding its performance-optimization software line with a new version specifically targeting the I/O performance in physical IT infrastructures running Microsoft applications.

Condusiv next week plans to release its V-locity Server optimization software, a new application designed to increase the performance of I/O-intensive applications like Microsoft's SQL Server and Exchange running on physical servers, said Jerry Baldwin, CEO of the Burbank, Calif.-based vendor.

V-locity Server is a follow-on from Condusiv's previous I/O accelerator, the V-locity VM, which was targeted at virtualized environments, Baldwin said. It also takes advantage of the company's Diskeeper software for optimizing file read and write at the Windows level, he said.

"When we looked at our Diskeeper market, we found customers were virtualizing their environments, so we brought out the V-locity VM," he said. "Now customers are putting more heavy workloads like Exchange and SQL on their server environments. So we combined caching technology from our OEM business with our commercial storage optimization technology rooted in Diskeeper, and than added additional technology to develop V-locity Server."

Howard Butler, senior director of field engineering for Condusiv, said physical servers are doing a tremendous amount of traffic, which is pushing customers to purchase more storage.

"But they're buying the storage, not for the capacity, but to manage the higher I/Os," Butler said. "If we can help Windows make better choices in how to handle those I/Os, we can help customers' environments run faster without adding more storage."

Chris Pyle, president of Champion Solutions Group, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based solution provider and Condusiv partner, certainly hopes that will be the case.

Champion has tested Condusiv's earlier V-locity VM product extensively in its own labs and found it to deliver the performance that was promised.

"Some of the statistics Condusiv claimed in virtualized environments were exciting," Pyle said. "So we gave it to our engineers to test. They were blown away. It was exciting stuff. We're looking forward to the new V-locity Server for physical environments."

V-locity will ship next week for Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2008 R2 and 2012 environments, and it runs on any industry-standard Windows hardware, Baldwin said.

Condusiv currently sells its software either on a per-core or per-server basis, or via site licenses for larger accounts, Baldwin said. The company plans to implement a (software-as-a-service (SaaS) model in May, he said.

The idea of a SaaS model is good news to Champion's Pyle, who is seeing his company's 365 Command SaaS service growing quickly.

"I'm a big believer in SaaS," he said. "And based on the 575,000 Office 365 mailboxes we have, our customers are big believers as well."

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